Sunday, December 06, 2009

Friends The Department and Wingdingo got hitched recently, but rather than go the route of a church service or a garden wedding, they headed straight to Las Vegas to exhange vows with Elvis at the Graceland Chapel. A few weeks after they returned, friends and family were invited to a casual low-key party to celebrate.

Balloon cupcakes

The wedding cake was a triple-tiered offering of caramel mudcake, white chocolate orange, and dark chocolate with Cherry Ripe. The balloon colours on the cupcakes represent an individual member of the family - a colour scheme that is persistently used to distinguish ownership in the house, like toothbrushes!

Las Vegas-inspired party bags for guests

Catering was provided by Adam Stratton and the boys from Tender Value Meats. Whilst I was saddened by the absence of Adam's award-winning sausages, we feasted on a buffet of roast beef, lamb and chicken with a broad selection of salads.

Salads

Adam carving the roast beef

Roast beef

Everyone digs in

Dessert was a combined effort of chocolate-dipped strawberries...

and macarons!

The super-talented Billy offered to make 99 macarons for the happy couple, an auspicious number for Chinese weddings because"99" sounds like "forever".

Macarons are notoriously fickle beasts, but after five failed attempts, Billy finally had the process down pat. So inspired was he, that after making three different flavour varieties, he woke up on the morning of the party and decided to make another batch of macarons, just because he could.

@missy_vas - We had them made for us by Fortune Cookies Australia - fortunecookies.com.au

@Simon - It doesn't look like a wedding, because it wasn't! :-)We wanted a carnival atmosphere, and so went for a full-on multi-coloured theme. And a third of the people at the party were under 15 years of age, so we did all we could to make sure our young friends had a good time too.